The Second Book of the '48'(BWV 870-893)

Background

In January 1995, a friend of mine, Professor Michael Beddow of Dept. of
German, Leeds University, gave me a disk containing the first 12 preludes
and fugues of J. S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II. They
were sequenced by an anonymous enthusiast and deposited in the public domain
on 17 August 1993. Ever since I am looking for this person to thank his
or her effort, but so far in vain. In common with many of those freely
available in internet, however, these MIDI files contained numerous errors,
and subsequently I have decided to correct them. So the result is the file
"wtc2-pt1.zip" [click here to download the
file].

I have also added the remaining 12 to complete the set, as I have already
edited the music with Finale for my research
project. The new MIDI files, i.e. #13-24, were fairly straight MIDI
output from Finale, but then I have added a gradual tempo change
with Cakewalk for Windows. You can of course read these MIDI files
to your score editors to print out the music. The file is called "wtc2-pt2.zip"
and you can also download it [click here].
All these files reflect my editorial decisions at the time; they are
not based on a printed edition by other musicologists.

To make these files audible from a MIDI output device, I have adjusted
tempi to a more acceptable value. In most cases, I have set Harpsichord
sound. They were also deposited in other internet archives (which has the
date stamp of 07 February 1995), among which one of the the most well-known
must be Piet van Oostrum's
MIDI archive (ftp.cs.ruu.nl)
where I have uploaded the files.

Recent Improvements

As a matter of experiment, I have edited all the files in June 1996, mainly
adding more elaborate articulations, ornamentations and tempo changes to
all the fugues. As These files are much more enjoyable to listen to. Jeremy
Bem used these files in his Glimmer,
an amazing 3D game for Macintosh.

More recently, I have decided to revise them one by one, mainly improving
ornamentations, articulations and registration. Those already modified
are shown in bold in the following table, while the most recently
updated files are in blink. So watch out this space!

About Use and Links

You are most welcome to download and listen to these files for your own
enjoyment. You are also free to create links to all my web pages.

But when you intend to use my files beyond this (e.g. using in your
own web pages or public performance), please let me
know first. Under normal circumstances, I will, of course, grant your use
of my MIDI files. These files are all copyrighted, as it derived from my book, which is published in 1995.